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The Role Of Recidivism In Criminal Justice

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In the field of criminal justice, recidivism is one of the most fundamental concepts. Recidivism is the relapse of a person back into the life of crime after undergoing some form of rehabilitation through sanctions or incarceration. The measure of recidivism is based on criminal acts that lead to an individual facing re-arrest or reconviction in a three-year period after their release. In many jurisdictions, the rate of recidivism is close to 50%. According to the Ministry of Justice (2012), in the recent years, recidivism unlike the general crime rate in most countries is not in decline. Offenders who have been to prison are the ones that pose a high risk of recidivism in comparison to other offenders (Andersen & Skardhamar, 2017, p.614). …show more content…

In some countries, recidivism is under consideration only if someone faces re-arrest, re-offending, or re-imprisonment, in other countries it is a combination of some or all of the factors. Furthermore, different nations still fail to include certain crimes such as misdemeanors, traffic offences, fines, and a myriad of other crimes (Fazel & Wolf, 2015, p.54). Some countries also fail to have a clear organization to their work hence their samples contain offenders, prisoners and others from open or closed institutions. Varying follow up periods are the final challenge the studies faced. Countries vary their follow-up period from between 6 months to 5 years. Fazel & Wolf (2015, p.56) reiterate that the rate of recidivism differs between different nations and is subject to many varying factors. This should be the subject of research, mainly if more comparable recidivism statistics becomes accessible. Potential justifications are the quality of post-release supervision, imprisonment threshold, varying intra-prison programs, and different prison medical amenity investment, especially for those prisons that target alcohol and drug issues as well as psychiatric …show more content…

Even after accounting for this change, there is no clear relationship with imprisonment rates. An attempt to engage in a deeper analysis of the data proves difficult due to the varying definitions. According to Lappi-Seppälä (2012, p. 89), a deep analysis would establish why there is such a huge difference between recidivism rates in different Nordic countries. An example is that in Norway the 2-year recidivism rate is 20% while in Sweden the rate is 43% over the same time. The situation is similar in the UK whereby Northern Ireland has a 1-year recidivism rate of 25% while England and Wales have a rate of 45% over the same period.
Majority of the research on recidivism is USA based. This is because the United States has one of the highest incarcerated populations in the world and sufficient data to conduct research. Going through numerous sources, the researchers all identified four key factors that contributed to high recidivism rates. These factors can be used a guideline while formulating policies aiming to reduce re-incarceration numbers.
1. Social

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